A Brief Conversation With Someone Smarter Than Us

This week: Stand-up, actor, renaissance man and all-around VERGE hero Patton Oswalt emails with Dan Fierman about the state of comedy. The topics up for debate: Are there too many stand-ups? Are we currently in a golden age? And how the hell did that happen?

**DAN FIERMAN: **I thought we could get started with what seems like a pretty natural question to ask a guy like you—and nah, it’s not about Leno, I’m not sure there are any words left on that topic—which is how do you interpret the topography of the current stand-up scene? It sure seems in flux right now.

PATTON OSWALT: The topography of the stand-up scene is, thankfully, spreading out and thinning. It’s easy and reductive to say that "comedy boomed in the 80’s, and then collapsed in the 90’s, and out of that collapse came greater creativity and experimentation". I should know, ’cause I say it a lot. The ground truth was a lot more complicated, but since most interviewers aren’t looking for a multi-paragraph mini-history, that was as good a characterization as any.

But even with the collapse of the boom, the concentration of entry points for success as a stand-up didn’t exactly expand to keep pace with the surge in experimentation, the numbers of younger comedians (who, so familiar with the grammar of stand-up as pounded into their heads by a decade of oversaturation on cable) and the dawn of the internet. It was still, essentially, L.A. and New York. And within those cities, it was a handful of "high yield" mainstream venues vs. a handful of—what I call—"high-yield" alternative venues.

That’s not to say the other rooms weren’t worth a comedian’s time. Quite the opposite. The reason that L.A. and New York remained the epicenter of most stand-up was because there were enough "low yield" rooms where comedians could develop—could crash and burn, experiment, edit and adjust—before doing shows in the "high yield" rooms. In fact, there seemed to be—especially in the mid to late 90’s—an informal "feeder" system between the low and high yield clubs—young talents who were beginning to gel, in terms of material, stage presence and confidence, would get moved into the high yield rooms, usually by a comedian or booker who was already established further up the chain. Other cities just didn’t have the number of rooms, and thus it was harder for younger comedians to develop. Oftentimes, an "open mike" was held at the very comedy club where they were hoping to get work. Club owners tend to have long memories and no patience.

So, despite the whole "post-boom, new wave" atmosphere, there was still a very archaic system in place for advancement. There were more choices—not much more, mind you—but more than there were before in the 80’s, where there was pretty much only one avenue: club success, Tonight Show spot, sitcom.

It’s only in the last few years that this rigid system has finally begun to crumble. Now that the internet has become like steam surrounding us, and with Twitter and Facebook and whatever next social networking platform around the corner, young comedians and creators can control the "how, when and what" of their creative content from the start. We’re finally seeing the first generation of comedians who don’t have the "feeder system" mentality. They begin their careers feeling they have endless and myriad options for access and, what’s more, they feel like they control it, and can create new options at their whim. In the next five years a young (or, who knows, established comedian) will:

Release a self-produced, digital-only stand-up album which will, in terms of downloads, equal a platinum sale.

Shoot and broadcast an episodic, YouTube or Vimeo weekly sitcom which will, in terms of downloads, be the #1 show in America.

Promote (and sell out) a tour simply through social network posting—never once printing a single poster, flyer or postcard. Plus, all the merch will be in digital form—wallpaper, digital booklet, etc.

Creatively, it’s a blazing world being born. I’m doing some upcoming theater shows, and needed openers, and my management sent me multiple YouTube clips of local comedians—performers who’ve never set foot in New York or Los Angeles—and they’re more seasoned, original, and startling than I ever was at their age.

**FIERMAN: **So are you planning on USING any of those comics your management sent you? Or was it more interesting to see from an academic perspective?

**OSWALT: **Oh yeah! I’m using one of the three I watched, and we’re keep the other two in mind for future gigs. They’re all young, developing and hungry, and they ought to keep me on my feet.

**FIERMAN: **In some ways, the comedy universe in the past decade or so seems to me to have a lot of parallels to the world of indie film. You know, I’m 34, so my "aware" comedy life encompasses the stand up club boom/bust cycle of the 80s and 90s and the rise of outlets like the UCB (and now UCB West), Largo and the like. And the existence of all those joints has always seemed like a good thing for me, non-funny person and enthusiastic consumer of comedy. But I wonder how they are for you? Do you find yourself in the same situation as indie filmmakers, where there are almost too many products, too many voices, too many PEOPLE sucking up the oxygen in the room? Or is the democratization of comedy, in the sense that if you’re funny (or think you are), you have more outlets than ever, a good thing? I go back and forth on that—usually after seeing a particularly rotten show somewhere—and I’m deadly curious what you think.

**OSWALT: **The more people, the better. I never got better as a comedian until I moved to San Francisco in 1992, and was suddenly surrounded by, literally, two dozen comedians who were funnier than anyone I’d ever seen out in the road clubs. In fact, I’d deluded myself that I was starting to get "pretty good" before I moved to S.F., but I’d only gotten good in terms of the shitty, forgettable club standards of the time. Once I got my head kicked in by how creatively bankrupt my act was, I had to get better or die.

There were always rotten shows, especially before the democratization of comedy, and there’ll be plenty more. Only now, the rotten shows won’t last very long. It’s like how, in a small town, you can keep a shitty Chinese restaurant open for a looooooong time, because people simply don’t have any other choice. In the big city, with more and more choices, and a wider mix of ethnic eateries, the shitty restaurant has a harder time.That doesn’t explain the always-crowded Olive Garden in Times Square, though.

**FIERMAN: **A related issue: The road. Lots of comedians have told me there is an essential art being lost with the demise of the traveling stand-up. Guys like Mitch Hedberg before he passed and Louis CK today will tell you that there’s a whole generation who missed out on the essential training of bombing, moving on, and bombing again. You know: Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Until you’re good. What do you make of that?

**OSWALT: **Louis and Mitch were correct in that assessment until recently. In the mid-90’s, there were a lot of "hothouse flower" alternative acts. They’d do well in hipper-than-thou little alternative rooms, and there they stayed. They never got that desperately needed seasoning which would have given them the skills to make any crowd "their crowd". But you know what? Most of them don’t do stand-up anymore. Just like the road hacks of the 80’s either stayed out on the road, or faded over the horizon on cruise ships and corporate gigs.

But now, with the comedy topography lapping up against the endpoint of its own frontier, comedians have brought the idea of "the road" into their own rooms. That is to say—the internet, where nearly every show is discussed, dissected and critiqued on countless message boards, comment threads and comedians’ own journals. When you "bomb" in a little, seemingly "protected" little "alt" venue, it becomes national in a way it never was on the road. So, in a weird way, a lot of young comedians learn the one essential, crucial lesson of the road, without leaving their town:

_A great set is just as unimportant as a bad set. When you wake up the next day you’re still a comedian, the world’s still turning, and you’ve still got work to do.

_

Plus, there are DIY comedy festivals popping up in different towns, everywhere—outside of L.A. and New York. This gives a lot of young comedians incredible chances to mix and mingle with voices and people from other cities. And it seems—to me—that this new generation coming up realizes the pitfalls of becoming a delicate, alt-comedy posey. They saw so many over-validated "alt" darlings in ironic T-shirts, reading off of notebooks onstage, become lazy, self-indulgent grinds. So, hopefully, this next wave will keep that in mind. We’ll see.

FIERMAN: You bring up TV, and I’d love to talk about that for just a quick minute. Doesn’t it seem like a medium that mirrors the ripple effect of the, for lack of a better word, democratization of the comedy scene? Suddenly you have FX not only giving the guys of It’s Always Sunny...—whatever you think of that show—a deal based on a $120 pilot, but you can see real evolution in the comedy of what would have, once, been very standard sitcoms. Modern Family isn’t a show that I love, but I do think it’s a ton more interesting than it would have been if, say, Arrested Development had never existed. How do you feel about the comedy that’s on TV right now? And shit, as long as we’re here: was that Community bit a one-off?

**

OSWALT: **Well, first off, television, just like movies and even music and publishing, to some extent, doesn’t truly innovate until its infrastructure is collapsing. The whole "internet revolution", at least in terms of stand-up and sketch comedy, has been erupting and refining and advancing for more than a decade now. But it wasn’t until the three networks started to feel the bite of the other cable networks that they became more open to innovation and risk. They remind me of the way the major movie studios must have been in the late 60’s and early 70’s. They’ve gloriously thrown their hands in the air, finally, and said, "Well, let’s at least try ’a, b or c’ here."

So yeah, you get things like_ It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia_, and Tim and Eric, and the new Funny or Die series, and Adult Swim and The Sarah Silverman Program and Eastbound and Down and a dozen other things which are wriggling through the bolted-down cameras and rhyming sitcom plots and sparking and bubbling on the screen—none of them are for everyone, but they’re very personal, brilliant and memorable visions and viewpoints about what’s funny, and what constitutes a story, and who the creators think are overlooked, human characters worth following.

I really hope the Community bit wasn’t a one-off. Not only ’cause I like working, but because it’s a resurgence of the kind of comedy I love.

Those four Thursday night shows on NBC—Community, Parks and Recreation, The Office, and 30 Rock—are so solid and patient and hilarious. And, like SCTV, Fernwood 2Nite and The Simpsons, they’re building expanding comedic universes. 30 Rock takes a hilarious, one-line character like Moon Vest ("Give me your toenails!") and has him re-appear on a subway, scooching away from a scratchy Jack Donaughey in one of the corners of the screen. Parks and Recreation establishes Leslie’s mom as a hovering, destructive force, and Ron Swanson’s still performing, quietly, as Duke Silver. The Office has laid in elaborate backgrounds and ongoing story arcs to every single denizens of its cubicles, and is now starting to fill in the loading dock workers and other businesses in the office park. And I know Dan Harmon, and his many-roomed mind, and I can’t imagine he wouldn’t start bringing minor characters back in the second season of Community, or later in the first. The community college itself—like the town of Pawnee, like the mutant-world NBC of 30 Rock, like the fluorescent lights and acoustic ceilings and sad coffee of Dunder Mifflin—is as much a personality as the characters. And I can’t wait to see how seed and refine it.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if they managed to pull off one of those comic book-style, summer crossover 4 episode deals between those 4 shows? That’d be fucking epic.

**FIERMAN: **My last (serious) question: And might be purely a selfish one, because I have a toddler (just over two) and the ways in which it has totally rewired my brain about the way I see the world, the discipline required for me to do my job, my perspective on my own writing and work has been pretty staggering. That’s obviously a discovery everyone makes when they have kids, and it’s not exactly revolutionary. But I’m curious how kids have impacted your own working schedule and stand up—since while it’s obviously not impacting the use of terms like "Fucksquatch" (and thank God for that) it seems to be creeping into your material.

**OSWALT: **It hasn’t been as heavy as I anticipated. If anything, I’m more disciplined ’cause I don’t have a choice in the matter. Gotta get up at dawn. Gotta make the most of the time I’ve got when she’s napping. Since I have less time, I don’t sit and dither and over-think anything I’m about to write—I’ve got to jump in, gotta spit words and then embellish. The only chaos it’s created is in my traveling—’cause now, I really really fucking hate it. Hotel rooms are now brooding cells away from a day with my daughter, and it sucks. But I’m even trying to make that better, by wandering around whatever city I’m in. I’ve become quite the walker—anything to take my mind off the fact that I’m not at home. And maybe, maybe, I can file away cool stuff to do with her when she’s older and might want to travel with me. I can see how she’s on the cusp of what every kid inherently begins their lives with—that giddy feeling that every day’s going to be super-fun. And I want to do everything I can to never never discourage that.

**FIERMAN: **OK. I’ll let you go shortly, because this Q+A is getting epic and very un-brief. Other than the stuff we’ve discussed already, what are you reading/listening to/watching/generally loving in the culture?

OSWALT: Too much stuff to name, so let’s pick three from three categories. Believe me, there’s a lot more.

Books:

The Extra, released yesterday (as I write this) by Michael Shea. Michael Shea, one of my absolute favorite writers, has expanded a short story of the same name from his landmark collection Polyphemus, about future studio-states and the "extras" who risk life and limb in big-budget disaster flicks. Sounds high-concept, but he uses it as a springboard to ding all sorts of sly riffs on social classes, violence, racism and corporate greed.

Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn. This is a brutal and hilarious memoir, about Nick’s zig-zag journey from drunk to poet to writer, and his dad’s parallel journey from drunk to drunker to lunatic. I read it in two days.

2666 by Robert Bolano. I’m so glad I’m only 1/3 of the way into this. James Ellroy, south of the border.

Comedy:

Death of the Party, Kyle Kinane. This guy usually opens for me on the road, and he’s just put out his first CD on ASTRecords. Finally. I think he’s one of the freshest new talents out there, with a slow-motion car-crash approach to narrative and jokes. Totally unique and addictive.

Gates of Heaven. Actually, I’ve seen this several times, but this is one of those works—like Dubliners, or Forever Changes, or Jimmy Corrigan or the Sharpling & Wurster CDs, which I return to every few years, to discover new insights.

The Snake. Super-low budget, super-offensive, utterly charming comedy about a pussy hound with a 1/2 track mind. Adam Goldstein, in the title role, is so repulsive and hilarious, you feel like you’re watching a documentary. And you can’t figure out how the documentarian filming Adam didn’t just strangle him and do the world a favor. Required.

**FIERMAN: **Since all GQ readers—being individuals of taste—certainly own all of your brilliant albums and have bought a DVD of Big Fan, I’m sure they want to know, what are you working on right now?

**OSWALT: **A book (writing it) a play (acting in it, in the spring and summer in NYC) and two movie—one I’m co-writing which I will act in, another I didn’t write which I’ve been offered the lead in. But we’ll see about those last two.

**FIERMAN: **Finally, my wife is making me ask you for a little advice. How do we tell our son that Remy the "mouse" in Ratatouille (a movie he loves; mom and dad cook) is really Remy the RAT. She’s concerned about Brooklyn kids getting a little too attached to, you know, vermin.

**OSWALT: **Your son’s from Brooklyn? Tell him that liking rats is soooooo 2006.

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